


places I'll go, I haven't been

by emjam



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Ford-centric, Gen, Happy, Moving On, past angst, this might count as fluff idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 08:23:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10636041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emjam/pseuds/emjam
Summary: The town was no longer the point around which his life pivoted.[Ford muses about letting go of Gravity Falls.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from Collapsible Lung by Relient K: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvcaN_JuKA0
> 
> I feel like the general feel of the song is nice for this little work. I think I actually first heard it on a Gravity Falls playlist a looong time ago.

If Ford were being honest, he was glad to be leaving Gravity Falls.

Truthfully, it felt like home; however, just as truthfully, it felt like an unfortunate reminder.

The town was, of course, a safe haven when he arrived, a grounding point of relief and joy in a sea of insecurity and self-consciousness. The turmoil at home never truly settled in college, even after he made friends and attempted to forget the sick wrongness that sat with him ever since Stan was kicked out. It stuck in his throat so he never talked about it, even to Fiddleford. Worse yet, he could feel people looking at his fingers wherever he went, intrigued but also disgusted.

In Gravity Falls, both of these injuries began to fade. Research lessened the pain of his estranged brother, and he was pretty sure some of the residents themselves were even weirder than him. Nobody stared at him like he was “too weird”, because everything there was at least as strange, if not stranger. It was a source of pure happiness to feel so at home on a planet that denied him the luxury for years. He belonged there, like a missing piece that could be put right in, and he consumed everything he could about the oddities of Gravity Falls because they reminded him that he was not on the outside. That sense of belonging, even though he might not need its comfort anymore, still instilled happiness in him.

However, Gravity Falls also loomed large in his mind, dark and yellowish, as a symbol of manipulation and deceit. The ghosts of ignorance and fear lurked alongside happy memories of the town. The same basement where he enjoyed playing DD&MD for the first time in years with Dipper was also home to scars, both physical and mental, and his obvious plethora of mistakes. It was where he blew off Fiddleford, and where he spent most of his days after he left. It was where he convinced himself that no one was reliable and that all had the capacity to exploit or injure. It was where he kicked his brother into a lifelong brand and spewed his arrogance in the face of his brother’s struggles. True, Stan also committed wrongs, but that didn’t excuse Ford, and the hated sigil on the side of the control panel outside the portal room made him slow to move past it all.

As best as he tried to maintain the feeling of comfort that he identified with the town, the blatant reminders of pain and suffering did not escape him, and they were a large thing to try and swallow regardless of any transforming properties the love of his family bestowed upon his former home. While he was madly grateful for them, as they made it feel more lived in than he had even with six years of residence, it was, in his opinion, high time to depart. They would of course visit and eventually return, but the town was no longer the point around which his life pivoted. He cared beyond it now.

As the “welcome to Gravity Falls” sign became smaller in the rearview mirror, the slogan being recently changed from “nothing to see here folks” to “never mind all that”, Ford sat back in the passenger seat of the El Diablo and smiled.

“What’re you smiling about, sixer?” Stan asked from the driver’s seat, breaking from his tale of how he obtained the boat they were currently on their way to board for the first time. The way he did it was no doubt completely illegal, but at this point in his life Ford cared little for the law, and the shadow government was indebted to him anyways.

Ford hadn’t been in this car for decades, and it smelled and looked completely different. It was a welcome change of pace as he entered this new chapter of his life. No longer was his existence inseparably tied up with the town of Gravity Falls. The circumstances surrounding his adventures beyond this dimension, while placing him in a very new situation, had still derived directly from that place, and even while expanding his horizons tenfold in the multiverse, his main goal remained to take down that damned demon he had met in Gravity Falls anyways.

But this? Sailing with his brother into waters unexplored, if not by science, then at least by the two of them? Sharing this wholly new experience with family?

It was completely new, and he embraced it.

"I guess I'm just happy, is all."


End file.
